NEW DELHI: Inkaar, Sudhir Mishra's latest film, may have failed to set the box office on fire, but it has created quite a flutter in the advertising world, with the fraternity refusing to accept the way it depicts an ad agency.

"Advertising is probably the only profession in the country where a woman can do what she wants to do, can speak her mind without even an iota of fear and can live her life the way she wants to be," Prasoon Joshi, CEO and chief creative officer of McCann World Group India, says.

Lack of knowledge and understanding about the industry could be the reason for choosing ad agency as the workplace for depicting sexual harassment, he avers. "It's not an industry of exploitation but an industry of equality." Almost everybody in the fraternity agrees. It's a mad world, but not bad, they say.

Priti Nair, director and co-founder of ad agency Curry-Nation, says the film falls to the stereotype that ad agency is glamour-laden and loose life. "You just have to show a woman wearing a nose ring, with a wine glass in hand, and yes smoking-and you have an ad woman," she says.

KV Sridhar, chief creative officer, Indian subcontinent, at Leo Burnett, however, believes that there's no stereotyping. "Ad agencies have become a metaphor of progressive women and flamboyant men," he says. Sridhar says it's a good thing that a movie has been made on a sensitive issue. "There are not many movies dealing with sexual harassment," he says.

"Power disequilibrium is what fuels exploitation, sexually or otherwise," says Smitha Sarma Ranganathan, a brand communication specialist who teaches marketing management at IBS Bangalore. "So, over-emphasising and contextualising this specifically to the advertising industry paints a biased picture of the fraternity at large."

Ultra Violet Digital, the digital agency handing the campaign, rolled out an interesting website wherein users can vent out their frustrations and bitch about their bosses. The site, ibitch.in, has a section on office gyan dealing with humorous and nasty jokes on bosses and colleagues.

Sample this: "I have a talented boss. He is called the office boy. Oh Boss, ek coffee dena." Another: "That creative person upstairs. He thinks he is no less than Picasso. The funniest part is even my painter thinks the same." Some, like this one, hit below the belt: "No appraisal this year. The CEO is spending it all on his mistresses."